Original Brands vs Cheaper Copies – How Much Are We Really Paying For the Name?

I’ve been thinking about something lately and would be interested to hear what everyone else thinks.

When buying certain products, you can sometimes find a copy or alternative that looks remarkably similar to the original, yet costs less than half the price.

That raises an interesting question for me: if someone can manufacture and sell a comparable product for less than half the price, how much of the price of the original are we actually paying for the product itself, and how much are we paying for the brand name, marketing, distribution and profit margins?

I completely understand that established brands have higher costs—research and development, quality control, warranties, advertising, retail stores, staff, etc. And I'm certainly not suggesting that every cheaper copy is equal in quality.

But when the price difference is enormous, it does make you wonder.

Where do you draw the line?

Do you prefer to buy the original brand because you believe you're getting genuinely better quality, reliability and after-sales service? Or are there times when a much cheaper alternative makes more sense because you're simply paying far too much for the name?

I'd be interested to hear people's experiences. Have you bought a cheaper alternative and been pleasantly surprised—or regretted not buying the original?

A couple of examples for me were buying a Leofoto G4 Gear head that looks the same as the Acra Swiss D4 head (at half the price) and a Camera stand that retails in the USA for $2700 verses one from Alibaba for $298

My main long reach lenses are Nikon z mount Neil , with a smattering of cheaper ( now) F mount thrown in but I also have two Z mount viltrox lenses recently added a 85mm f1.8 @ £150 and a 20mm f2.8 @ £ 100 for the little use either will get it wouldn’t be worth getting Nikon versions . Same with my macro rather than a Z mount I went for a F mount 105mm at just over £100
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Same with flash guns I have a Nikon sb900 but my go to is a godox it-32 small ,cheap and very versatile

I've noticed over the years that quality fares even within a major brand, depending on the market it's being sold in.
One example in clothing: my wife was buying T-shirts and camisole tops in Zara in Hong Kong; they cloth was thicker and better quality than the same things being sold in the UK. Clearly Chinese people expect better quality than the British.
Another is food: In Northern Ireland, the same roast beef/chicken ready meal in M&S has more meat than the one in the UK. Other foods here in M&S are better than we looked at when living in England.
I do however tend to favour major brands for electronics and similar, simply for the QC and after sales that goes with them.

For years I bought Gitzo tripods because they were supposedly the best ( they were certainly the most expensive) Then I was talked into buying a Leofoto tripod for 1/2 the price from my mate who owns a large camera dealership in Kuala Lumpur who for years sold me Gitzo tripods lol………. The quality of the Leofoto tripod was as good if not better which made me think that I have been getting ripped off for years.

ndwgolf said:

A couple of examples for me were buying a Leofoto G4 Gear head that looks the same as the Acra Swiss D4 head (at half the price) and a Camera stand that retails in the USA for $2700 verses one from Alibaba for $298

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Those are good examples. Even if the cheap studio stand that you bought is poor, will the more expensive one at 10x the price last 10x as long?
Even when I operated a busy commercial studio and used a studio stand continuously, I think that I would have gone for the cheaper option, had it been available.

Cars are another good example, I drive an old car that does the job, a neighbour has just bought a brand new one for 14x as much - his money, his choice - but is his fancy new car, fitted with electronics that he simply can't work out how to use, a better or worse buy?

Take another of your choices, Profoto. Decent quality, but in my opinion vastly overpriced, compared to copies from other makers. What Profoto are extremely good at is marketing, but in the world of flash, the best make by a country mile is Bron, which costs even more but which seems to be extremely bad at marketing. When I did photography for a living, Bron was just about worth considering because of the outstanding performance and build quality, Godox would be OK because of the better VFM, but Profoto wouldn't have been good enough for critical work IMO and offered, as far as I was concerned, the worst of both worlds - but many people think that they're great.

Same with cameras. I know nothing about the current offerings, but I always lusted after Hasselblad cameras but couldn't afford them for a long time. When I did eventually buy one it was a disappointment, with reliability issues and the film back constantly becoming stuck, and I ended up with RZ67 cameras, far better in every way and at a fraction of the cost.

ndwgolf said:

For years I bought Gitzo tripods because they were supposedly the best ( they were certainly the most expensive) Then I was talked into buying a Leofoto tripod for 1/2 the price from my mate who owns a large camera dealership in Kuala Lumpur who for years sold me Gitzo tripods lol………. The quality of the Leofoto tripod was as good if not better which made me think that I have been getting ripped off for years.

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Another good example. The weak point on the vast majority of cheap tripods is the quick-release, but get any tripod that has a good quick release mechanism and the make becomes almost irrelevant,

There's several things to consider: who paid for the r&d to design and manufacture originally, where are things made, is the cheaper product the result of outsourcing by the originator to a low-cost manufacturer who then made their own version.

When I ran my own business I was approached by a company to make a test for a specific biochemical marker. Having done this for many years I put together a realistic but low-cost development plan and submit a quote. They came back to say that the quote they had from China was 10% of my cost, and they wouldn't be using me. I could have made something that might have worked a bit for that price, enough to possibly get paid, but it wouldn't have been good, and to be honest, I don't think even a Chinese developer could have done a half decent job for so little money. If a business is using European R&D then the upfront cost will be much higher and they will reasonably need to recoup that.

We definitely pay for the name, and quite often the items are made in the same place anyway.
This goes for car parts, cookers, fridges, many phone and camera parts.

Zafira coil pack, £26 pirate part, nearly four times that for "genuine", many Nissan parts have a Renault part that is the same, the prices vary greatly, and pirate parts are half or less.
Part for a Bently engine, double what they are for a VW, but it is a VW part!

Sangoma said:

Zafira coil pack, £26 pirate part, nearly four times that for "genuine", many Nissan parts have a Renault part that is the same, the prices vary greatly, and pirate parts are half or less.
Part for a Bently engine, double what they are for a VW, but it is a VW part!

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This has always been the same, back in the 70's Triumphs, TVRs and Aston Martins shared the same suspension bush. When I rebushed by 1970s TVR in 1992, the prices were

Triumph Specialist £2
TVR Specialist £4
Aston Martin £10

Its still goes on today, some Bugatti's have boggo VW parts on them!

Years ago, I had an old S2a Landy which needed a dip switch - a standard Lucas part as fitted to many '60s and '70s cars (probably earlier too!) A quick trip to the local Lucas warehouse got me a price which seemed a little steep so, out of interest, I went to the main dealer (Landy) and asked for a price. Significantly cheaper for the same part. In fact, the Landy part was in a Lucas box with a Landy part number on a branded sticker!

ndwgolf said:

I’ve been thinking about something lately and would be interested to hear what everyone else thinks.

When buying certain products, you can sometimes find a copy or alternative that looks remarkably similar to the original, yet costs less than half the price.

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Amongst other things I did product approvals for 12 years. Some products are for sale with different "manufacturers" names on them, some are just picked from a catalogue and that choice and supplying the name that goes on it, the box and the documentation that goes in the box are the only input the "manufacturer" has.

So yes, you can often find the exact same product from the exact same factory available with different branding and at different prices. Sometimes a manufacturer might really put in some effort and get the factory to fit a slightly different control panel to make it look different, something like that, but the rest of the product is the same. However, some products are substandard copies and if you can spot them avoid them.

I used to work for a manufacturer who made a product which went out of the door with another companies name on it and in a box made by yet another company. Mrs WW's managed a company who used to put the documentation packages together and add the little tools etc that you sometimes get in the box freeing up more time for the manufacturers to look through those factory catalogues. Even the documentation and little free tool might not be from the company with its name on the product. Just sometimes the company with its name on the product hasn't touched it, the box or the documentation and they might not have done the approvals either, someone like me probably did. If you can get the thing cheaper with a different badge on it, do it.